The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has released transcripts from its grand jury investigation into the March 12 fatal police shooting of Kelly Vern Mark Swoboda—a wanted felon sought in a brutal kidnapping and more recently accused of creeping past middle school girls in Southwest Portland.
John Romero, the officer who shot Swoboda, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the case, the DA’s office announced earlier this month. Police news releases have told some of the story of how the shooting went down. But the transcripts provide, for the first time, an exhaustive retelling—including Romero’s firsthand accounting of what was going through his mind when he first saw Swoboda.
And how Romero reacted when, he says, Swoboda fired first.
There are more than 300 pages of transcripts, with 30 or so pages from Romero’s inteview alone. I’ve pulled just a sampling of his testimony here: when he heard Swoboda fire, his “instantaneous” decision to fire his own weapons, and a bit that could see this shooting, in after-action reports, reinforce police training on something called the “action-reaction” principle.
That’s particularly important. Police officers are taught that they’ll almost always be beaten off the draw by a potentially armed subject—that their reaction will always be a few seconds behind someone’s potentially lethal action. This is why, in most cases, police officers who fire first are found within policy.
Good for him. He saved the taxpayers a lot of money.
So, the point of this blog entry is to suggest that this might have been a cold hearted execution-by-cop rather than a justified action of self-defense? If so, I guess I tip my cap to you, Dennis, for maintaining your die-hard anti-police stance by somehow drawing into question a police shooting that could not have been scripted to be more justified without someone getting killed immediately preceding the shooting. You do not cease to amaze. (but you do certainly make it easier to disregard your other more reasonable seeming police critiques)
Um, quite the opposite, Bridger. It was to make clear that Officer Romero pointedly said Swoboda fired first. In fact, I caught some heat from accountability advocates for not taking a more skeptical tack. Also, go read the transcripts. I’ve put them out there so no one has to take my work, or anybody else’s, about what they contain.
Don’t worry, your disdain and skepticism of Romero’s testimony comes through clearly, here and elsewhere. We need accountability advocates (media included), and everyone knows the PDX Police hasn’t had the greatest track record in recent years. Your writing says you have distrust and contempt for Romero. Fine… own it, and then explain it.
Go ahead and cite an example or two or three, Mike Tyson. I hold neither of those things for Officer John Romero. I really think you’re reading something into this that just isn’t there.